The agency was warned of the potential for cuts earlier this month.

Hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees on probationary status were fired Thursday, lawmakers and weather experts said.

Federal workers who were not let go said the afternoon layoffs included meteorologists who do crucial local forecasts in National Weather Service offices across the country.

Cuts at NOAA appeared to be happening in two rounds, one of 500 and one of 800, said Craig McLean, a former NOAA chief scientist who said he got the information from someone with first-hand knowledge. That’s about 10% of NOAA’s workforce.

According to the AP, the initial layoffs targeted probationary employees in which the National Weather Service employs approximately 375 such workers.

These terminations align with billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency’s push to reduce the size of a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has described as inefficient and excessive. Numerous probationary employees across various government sectors have already lost their jobs.

The outcry about these and other terminations are not surprising but what DOGE is doing is no different than previous efforts to cut government’s size. Some examples are what Ronald Reagan tried to do with the Grace Commission and what Bill Clinton’s Reinventing Government (aka REGO) effort. In theory, Obama got in on the act too. The only difference is that DOGE is doing a more thorough job.

PHOTO CREDIT: NOAA Campus, Silver Spring, Maryland – By Famartin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50233892